Yankees History: Six Great Moments From 1990 To The Present

Every Yankees fan has moments from the team’s storied history etched in their mind and memory. They become so engrained, they could have occurred yesterday. See if these match any of yours.

Pick a Yankees , almost any decade, and great moments can be found.  I chose to center only on the span from 1990 to the present. But as you’ll see, even with that, you may find yourself shaking your head asking yourself, “How could he forget that one?”. The truth is I probably did remember; I just couldn’t include them all. And besides, these are not the “Greatest” moments. Just simply great moments.

The Yankees will play 162 games in 2017, just as they do every season. Their season will span six months of the calendar, encompassing the entire summer, while including three of America’s most celebrated and patriotic holidays. In good years, the Yankees will still be playing when kids are dressing up in their costumes on Halloween and leaves will be disappearing from trees in the Northeast.

From 1990 through 2016, the Yankees played 4,300 regular season games. By no stretch of the imagination, it is safe to say that between you and me that we remember – what would you say? Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty of those games? Probably, not even that many. Because the baseball season churns along at a rapid speed with one game following the previous one, leaving little time to digest what has occurred the day before.

And often, video highlights from the last night’s game have disappeared because an afternoon game is underway the following day. And that’s another way most of us have changed over the years. We don’t watch Yankees telecasts. Oh, we might catch three or four innings here and there. But most of the time we are part of what I call the Highlight Crew. We want the headlines (only).

Remember too, that these Great Yankees Moments are not listed in any particular order. That’s not the purpose. The purpose is to bring them to you once again, taking you back into another time, and perhaps even another place

Show me that video of the 450 ft home run that Aaron Judge crushed, and I’ll be happy, even if the Yankees lost by a score of 6-4.

But almost immediately following that tour of the highlights, it’s on to other things. Nothing sticks. Nothing moves from our short-term memory to our long-term memory. And why should it? It’s just another game.

But occasionally, something special happens. Something significant, wherein you wake up the next morning and do your usual highlight check. And then you see a little headline. David Wells has thrown a perfect game in a drunken stupor (he says), and we tuned the game out in the fourth inning because he looked like he was about to fall off the mound, went to bed, readying ourselves for the next workday.

And that might be a little game we can play amongst ourselves as we move along now to those Great Moments, asking ourselves how many of these did we see “live” versus how many we saw “on tape” (later).

Remember too, that these Great Yankees Moments are not listed in any particular order. That’s not the purpose. The purpose is to bring them to you once again, taking you back into another time, and perhaps even another place when the Yankees did something special to make our lives just a little bit better. We’ll start off with this one from 2015.